Exercise While the Kids Nap with these Workouts for Busy Moms
Tell me if this sounds familiar:
Working out feels like a luxury. The only moments you do have to yourself are when your kids are napping during the day.
But when you finally get those quiet moments in your house, you feel stuck. You’re not sure what type of workouts you can do that will only take as much time as your child is asleep. So, you search YouTube until you hear your child waking up and put off the workout for another day.
If you’ve been through this scenario one too many times, you’re not alone. The ideal workout for you needs variety as much as flexibility.
Here are five workouts for busy moms that you can do while the kids are napping. From five minutes to thirty minutes, I’m going to include different workouts for a variety of timeframes.
Burpee Blast
Time to complete: 5 minutes
This is a straightforward and time-saving workout, but make no mistake about it, this isn’t easy. Grab a stopwatch and give yourself enough space to do a push-up. You’ll only perform burpees, but the catch is your time limit will change for each round.
Every minute for five minutes, you’ll perform burpees in a descending pyramid format:
- Minute One: Burpees: 45 seconds / Rest: 15 seconds
- Minute Two: Burpees: 40 seconds / Rest: 20 seconds
- Minute Three: Burpees: 35 seconds / Rest: 25 seconds
- Minute Four: Burpees: 30 seconds / Rest: 30 seconds
- Minute Five: Burpees: 25 seconds / Rest: 35 seconds
Stomach Shredder
Time to complete: 10 minutes
Is the problem area your stomach? Want to improve your core strength while getting more definition? This core-focused workout will only take ten minutes. Do as many repetitions as you can within two minutes, then switch to the next exercise.
- Minutes One and Two: Crunches
- Minute Three and Four: Superman
- Minute Five and Six: Russian Twists
- Minute Seven and Eight: Sit-Ups
- Minute Nine and Ten: Mountain Climbers
Plyo Pulverizer
Time to complete: 15 minutes
One of the best ways to burn calories while working on cardiovascular health, lower body strength, and functional movement patterns is with plyometrics. Also known as jump training, a few plyo exercises go a long way.
Perform all of the repetitions of one exercise before moving on to the next exercise. Try not to take a break until you’ve completed all the exercises. Rest for three minutes then repeat the workout two more times.
- Jump Squats: 15 repetitions
- Speed Skaters: 20 repetitions (10 on each side)
- Knee Tucks: 10 repetitions
- Butt Kicks: 10 repetitions
- Burpees: 5 repetitions
Head-Turning Upper Body
Time to complete: 20 minutes
This upper body workout focuses on the muscles that get all the attention and tend to be areas of focus for weight loss such as the arms and stomach.
Do as many repetitions as you can do in two minutes then move on to the next exercise. Once you complete the list, do it one more time for a total of 20 minutes.
Total Body Blaster
Time to complete: 30 minutes
This is a total body workout that features exercises for fat loss and lean muscle growth. You’ll be supersetting exercises here, which are shown with the “AA”, “BB”, “CC”, etc. format.
Perform one exercise and when you finish, immediately perform the other paired exercise. Once you’ve completed the pair of exercises, rest for 90 seconds and move on to the next set.
A: Bodyweight Squats: 3 sets of 10-15 repetitions
A: YTWL: 3 sets of 10 repetitions
B: Crunches:
C: Push-Ups:
C: Exaggerated Tension Reverse Fly: 10 repetitions
D: Glute Bridges: 15 repetitions
D: Superman Flutter Kicks: 20 repetitions (10 on each side)
Squeezing in a Workout
Kids can be a handful but that doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice your workouts. If you have a good idea of how long they nap, you can select one of the workouts above that fits that block of time. The important thing is to be consistent and remember that even a short workout is better than no workout.
